UPDATE:

The question that has loomed over Newport Beach for nearly two years got its answer early this morning, as the final voting results declared victory for the measure that would place the new City Hall on a parcel near the central library.

With more than 26,000 residents voting, Measure B prevailed with 52.8%. Groups supporting and opposing the measure campaigned adamantly through Tuesday, but after the results came in, residents on both sides said they felt it was time for the city to leave politics behind and move forward with the project.

“I’m obviously disappointed the way the vote turned out,” Mayor Ed Selich said. “As the saying goes, the voters have spoken, so I think the council is going to move ahead and do what we have to do to get a City Hall built on the site next to the library.”

Selich estimated that it would take until the summer of 2009, at least, before the city could get through paperwork and start construction on the new building. In the meantime, he said, council members would have to decide what to do with the site of the current City Hall, which the mayor hoped could be converted to some kind of civic use.

Council member and former Mayor Steve Rosansky, a proponent of Measure B, said he “went to sleep happy” around 1 a.m. when about half the precincts had reported positive results. Like Selich, he urged citizens to find a common ground.

“At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is building a new City Hall,” he said. “We need a new City Hall, and we should focus on that direction and put these other extraneous issues aside.”

The city’s main difficulty, Rosansky added, would be dealing with a November lawsuit filed by activist Allan Beek, which challenges the legality of leaving the City Hall issue up to voters. An Orange County District Court judge blocked a restraining order in December that would have prevented Measure B from appearing on the ballot, but Beek said Tuesday he intended to proceed with the lawsuit.

Karen Tringali, an organizer for Newporters Vote No on B, said the measure’s narrow victory showed that Newport Beach was not unified behind the idea of building City Hall on a parcel that many felt should be preserved as a park.

“The groundswell of support we received in last few weeks certainly would have indicated to us that there were more and more people beginning to understand the real issues at play and becoming more supportive or changing their minds,” she said. “I think the fact of the matter is that voting was so close that it should certainly leave a question in people’s minds about how definitive this victory really is.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].